Fixing Date Formatting in Laravel Notification Model Using a Custom Trait

In a Laravel project the built‑in notification system returned dates in an unexpected format, because the default Illuminate\Notifications\DatabaseNotification class does not apply the custom date formatter.

The author first shows the controller method that fetches notifications:

public function index(Request $request)
{
    $notifications = \Auth::user()->notifications()->paginate($request->size);
    return $this->success($notifications);
}

They then examine the HasDateTimeFormatter trait, which defines serializeDate() to format dates, and note that this trait is not used by the framework's notification model.

<?php
namespace App\Models\Traits;

trait HasDateTimeFormatter
{
    protected function serializeDate(\DateTimeInterface $date)
    {
        return $date->format($this->dateFormat ?: 'Y-m-d H:i:s');
    }
}

To apply the formatter, a custom Notification model extending Illuminate\Notifications\DatabaseNotification is created and the trait is imported:

<?php
namespace App\Models;

use App\Models\Traits\HasDateTimeFormatter;
use Illuminate\Notifications\DatabaseNotification;

class Notification extends DatabaseNotification
{
    use HasDateTimeFormatter;

    public function notifiable()
    {
        return $this->morphTo();
    }
}

Finally, the notifications() method in the User model is overridden to return the custom Notification model, ensuring the formatted dates are used:

<?php
namespace App\Models;

use App\Models\Traits\HasDateTimeFormatter;
use Illuminate\Foundation\Auth\User as Authenticatable;
use Tymon\JWTAuth\Contracts\JWTSubject;

class User extends Authenticatable implements JWTSubject
{
    use Notifiable, HasDateTimeFormatter;

    public function notifications()
    {
        return $this->morphMany(Notification::class, 'notifiable')
                    ->orderBy('created_at', 'desc');
    }
}

After these changes, the notification list displays dates in the correct Y-m-d H:i:s format, as shown in the final screenshot.